Bush vets dismiss Ridge claims

Top officials from the George W. Bush White House are disputing claims in former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s coming book that they pressured him to adjust the terror threat level for political gain.

“We went over backwards repeatedly and with great discipline to make sure politics did not influence any national security and homeland security decisions,” former White House chief of staff Andy Card told POLITICO. “The clear instructions were to make sure politics never influenced anything.”

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“I’m a little mystified,” former homeland security adviser Fran Townsend added in an interview. “Never in my experience did I see any political influence exerted on the cabinet secretary.”

According to promotional materials for Ridge’s coming book, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…And How We Can Be Safe Again,” the ex-homeland security secretary and governor of Pennsylvania accuses the Bush White House of pushing him to “raise the national security alert just before the 2004 Election.”

A description for the book on the publisher’s website also says Ridge “was pressured to connect homeland security to the international ‘war on terror’” and that he “pushed for a plan (defeated because of turf wars) to integrate DHS and FEMA disaster management in New Orleans and other areas before Hurricane Katrina.”

Townsend said Thursday that the accusations do not match her recollection of events and that any suggestion that the White House’s political team tried to alter the threat level is untrue.

“Under no circumstance was Tom Ridge or anyone else directed to change the threat level,” Townsend said. “It didn’t work that way, and it certainly didn’t work that way in 2004. It was always an apolitical process.”

Ridge did not respond to numerous requests for comment from POLITICO and a number of former top political and national security officials within the Bush administration declined to respond to Ridge, referring POLITICO to Card and Townsend.

“At no point when I was working with him did he express concerns about the raising or the lowering of the threat alert level,” Townsend said.

Townsend and Card also said that the process used to change the terror threat level made almost any claim of political influence impossible. Both said any change originated with DHS and was then referred to the National Security Council. The NSC then made a recommendation to the president which was then either agreed to or rejected.